Well, my sister has done it again...she always has bigger birthdays than me...not that I really begrudge her those at all...;) A big sister is lovely thing to have...there are so many birthday jokes one can use...but this year things were a bit more serious...it was indeed a big occasion!

On Tuesday, her day (shared, as she always reminded me, with every horse in the southern hemisphere about which I was dead jealous during my horsey years), Tim, my big brother and I called in to see her for an hour or so to wish her a very happy birthday, drop off her card and a bunch of flowers. She has recently had surgery on her ankle injured many years ago when I was a child...we had a small incident in her lovely little Gogomobile on Bruny Island after getting into loose gravel on the road. I was fine, but her ankle was broken badly...but that is indeed another story...

My sister and her cute little yellow gogomobile taken in 1959, when I was 7...she often took me out with her and we had some great adventures...the small car was one of the first seen in Tasmania and was a great novelty, especially in rural areas...

​I had spent quite a few hours in preceding weeks making her a special, very over-embellished and problematic card to mark this very special occasion. I have been hankering for some time to make a card using a transparent card base and this occasion seemed the ideal time to get cracking on it.​Getting the base sorted was a challenge in itself, choosing the right thickness transparency, keeping it clean and free from fingerprints and excess adhesive, that sort of thing. I ended up making the card base in two sections, with a tiny gusset at the top...this to assist in the ability of the acetate to stay folded, and to stand open nicely. Simply scoring and folding the acetate as one does a paper card card didn't work so well with the acetate...it simply wanted to spread open and not stay standing upright...

I was a little exercised as to how to disguise the top overlapped portion of the card as the double thickness and layer of adhesive was a little obvious, even though it was only about .3cm...this was the reason I could not take the card to my sister on her actual day...I finally, after trying several different finishes with ribbon, vellum and silver borders, very simply solved the problem by wrapping a thin silver stretchy cord around the top a couple of times and tying a small bow...this was quite enough to disguise the small visual defect of the construction outcome without the need for adding adhesive.

I tried a few different combinations of embellishments, having a bit of a thing about using bright and zappy juxtapositions of colours and texture lately but these trials all ended in being binned. They simply didn't work with the translucency, to my mind.In the end I pulled out my flower box and rummaged through and pulled out my remaining fairly neutral flowers made some time back...I used to love making flowers using different techniques but almost never use them myself in a project, these seemed to fit the present occasion so I just got in and got building! (after watching a couple of YT videos to give me strength...

Silver card stock and vellum scraps, a couple of dies and punches, some head scratching over which adhesive to use and where...and here we are...I still think it is waaay over the top, I am sure I will never make another one and I am perfectly sure my sister will (secretly as she is a kind soul), dislike it as much as I! But hey! You only turn eighty once.

The completed card...

The owl charm was included in a lovely gift package I received from my YT friend Maggie Lockley, from New Zealand a while back. My sister and brother in law actually lived in New Zealand for a time after they married. I did a spot of google mapping (I still remembered their address!), and found they lived not very far away from where Maggie lives now. Also, our mother always insisted that my sister loved owls and ensured all sorts of ways of confirming that preference...I have never actually heard my sister endorse this statement, but I know she has received may items depicting owls over her lifetime...we have a lot to thank our mothers for...so there was another great reason to include this sweet little silver charm on her card... (Trust me, there is ALWAYS a story!)

I used a small doily die to make the four opaque portions of the card. The first one is on the front as a base for the embellishments, the second is inside the front, covering the adhesive and underside of the front panel. This one carried the "Happy Birthday" sentiment, stamped in grey. The third carries a layered Happy 80th. sentiment in silver, the fourth is on the outside back cover, and carries our sentiment in silver foil...

​All is well! I like the card a little better now...problem solving is very satisfying, I find.

I even went on to make an acetate box envelope for this rather large card...it measures 14cm x 20cm, or 5 1/2" x 7 3/4". The envie was a trifle more difficult and I had to be very careful when scoring and folding the material as It wanted to slip out of shape rather, but I beat it into submission eventually and I quite like the effect...